A new Facebook activation from Absolut in Germany, ABSOLUT BEST OF ME, encourages users to showcase their creativity.

You may be surprised how creative you are. That’s the message that comes across from vodka brand Absolut’s new presence on Facebook, created for German-speaking consumers by TBWA\Berlin. Simply put, the Absolut Best of Me platform allows users to transform their existing Facebook content into a virtual gallery, showcasing their favourite posts, pictures and films.

Creative director Dirk Henkelmann says: “Very active Facebook users put a lot of information on the site, most of which is gradually forgotten. Absolut Best of Me enables them to resurrect it, curate it and display it as an exhibition. When you look back at all your posts and photographs, you’ll be amazed by your own creativity.”

The nascence of the site dates back to November, when TBWA and Absolut were discussing the brand’s potential on Facebook. Says Dirk: “We didn’t want to do just another fan page. When you have a brand like Absolut, whose brand behaviour is driven and inspired by creativity, you’re obliged to do something special. So we decided to give consumers a stage on which they could express themselves.”

Absolut’s consumers are often trend leaders who are likely to enjoy sharing their thoughts and inspiration in an unconventional way. Thanks to Absolut Best of Me they can transform their Facebook activity into an artistic journey that they can post to their wall and share with friends.

The platform is a flash microsite linked to Facebook via Facebook Connect. Once users have selected the material they want to use in their exhibition – and they can tweak and curate for as long as they wish – the selected posts and images are automatically transferred into the Absolut gallery landscape. The resulting animation resembles a virtual stroll through a gallery.

Account manager Alexis Mardon says: “It took us some time to develop the platform not only because of the technical aspects, but because we wanted to find a way of reassuring users that their ‘artworks’ would not be used in any other context outside the platform.”

Congratulations to Absolut for this example of brand behavior which is not a customer relations management campaign disrespecting the privacy of the participants: it’s a gift from Absolut to its fans, enabling them to show off their creativity. Well done.

BBC News US & Canada just posted a very interesting feature on its website explaining some of the latest developments in advertising. Using the example of product placement, the reporter demonstrates how brands are becoming part of the story.

As TBWA’s Worldwide Director of Media Arts Lee Clow observed in a recent interview: ”Brands did advertising: they talked at people; they bought television commercials and held you captive. Now they must interact with their audience in a multifaceted but coherent way.”

Some of the world’s most inspiring brands have proved that delivering content and becoming part of peoples’ lives is not only possible, it also drives success. This is because they do not distract audiences from the content they love. Instead, they create original ideas that people want to experience.

Check out how Gatorade and TBWA\Chiat Day LA initiated the Replay idea. Or how Absolut Vodka became part of the plot of “Sex and the City” by introducing the Absolut Hunk.

One of the latest examples of disrupting the rules of product placement comes from Germany, where McCafé has launched its newly developed brand idea as a key storyline within the German telenovela “Anna & die Liebe” (“Anna and Love”). Skillfully utilizing both digital and physical media, the campaign was developed by TBWA in Berlin.

Instead of interrupting the audience with commercial breaks, McCafé’s brand belief “Alles Gute beginnt mit einem guten Kaffee” (Everything good begins with a good cup of coffee) is brought to life in a popular TV show featuring fictional Berlin advertising agency Broda&Broda.

McCafé does not appear in the show through conventional product placement – but via campaign placement. Broda & Broda develops the campaign “Everything good starts with a good cup of coffee” while pitching for the McCafé account. Over several episodes, the audience sees how the claim was conceived, how the “first kiss” moment was shot and, finally, how Broda&Broda wins the pitch.

Many other aspects of the campaign will take place simultaneously, giving the audience a chance to interact with the brand both digitally and physically. For example, on the “Anna & die Liebe” site, fans are redirected through banners (in the form of recruitment ads for a new creative director post at Broda&Broda) to the McCafé Facebook fan site. Here, they are invited to upload their very own stories of good beginnings. And to reinforce the brand experience for the audience, the first real poster in the campaign will actually be seen in Berlin four days later, blurring the borders between virtual and real, fictional and actual.

For any comments or suggestions, send an email to Ulrich Proeschel.

In an absolut world New York’s Time Square would not be cluttered with advertising but would be the home of amazing art. This is how the IN AN ABSOLUT WORLD campaign was launched in 2007. Now this vision can become reality with your help. Check out the Times Square to Art Square (TS2AS) project, get involved and help turn all billboards on Times Square into art.

But even better, this is not only about donating to support the foundation it is about sharing your ideas for New York’s most famous square. So the initiators ask: “Do you have a clear idea on what Art Square should look like?” And invite you to upload your Art Square on the website.

For any comments or suggestions, send an email to Ulrich Proeschel.

As an evolution of its ongoing “DRINKS” campaign, ABSOLUT VODKA has used the bustling streets of Chicago to bring to life the unique universes created by visionary photographers, Ellen Von Unwerth and Amanda De Cadenet. With a series of bus shelter installations, ABSOLUT has leveraged the imagery of talent such as Kate Beckinsale, Zooey Deschanel & Ali Larter to transform these shelters into tactile installations for people to enjoy. Bringing to life the worlds that embody ABSOLUT “Lemon Drop,” Twist” and “Bloody,” the shelters (which will run until late December) use original seating, stunning colors and even tropical plant-life.

For any comments or suggestions, send an email to Ulrich Proeschel or contact Jamie Gallo of TBWA\Chiat Day New York directly.

Jean-Marie Dru is the Chairman of TBWA Worldwide He writes a memo to all his colleagues at TBWA every week. Sometimes, he shares them with us:

We have been talking about branded content for years. And also of brand content. In the first case, the brand participates in pre-existing editorial content, created by others. In the second case, the brand creates its own content.

We have recommended to numerous clients that they play an editorial role, to create content that wouldn’t otherwise have existed. For instance, consider the short Visa Winter Olympics films; or “Replay,” where Gatorade created a re-match between the Easton and Phillipsburg College football teams, 15 years later, with exactly the same players and the same referees. I am also thinking of all those great brand content initiatives from Nissan, Pedigree or Absolut.

The challenge is huge: our competitors are no longer just other brands, but all producers of content, be it TV or press, from journalists to scriptwriters. Our latest productions show that we can meet the challenge.

But often, the question of the legitimacy of brands creating content is raised. There is a preconceived notion that traditional media have more legitimacy than brands as providers of content.

Pascal Somarriba is the former advertising director of Benetton and Color’s magazine, sold for 5.50 euros, with a distribution of 350,000 copies. Here is what he thinks about this “legitimacy issue.”

“People believe that the media are by definition independent. As a consequence, this freedom would guarantee the quality of the content they create. This reasoning is not justified.

In fact, the media are profit-making businesses with commercial constraints that brands don’t have, because brands’ resources come from other activities. The desire to offer different brand experiences leads them to create qualitative content, and pushes them to invest in media projects which are financially inaccessible to traditional media. This is even truer for international companies, able to pay back their content on a worldwide scale.

And on top of it, media must be careful not to upset their reader base, their subscribers in particular, as well as their advertisers (there are numerous cases of advertisers boycotting media following an article or a TV report they didn’t like…).

Brands needn’t be restricted by editorial complexes. It is the level of their editorial ambition that will make the difference. The quality, creativity and innovation of what they do will give brand content the same credibility that the media have gained over time.”

In other words, there is no content that would “naturally” be of quality and for which we could say “in advance” that it is worth being consulted. It always comes back to the audience to judge the quality of the content. As such, brands and media are more and more on the same equal footing.

Donald Gunn asked Jean-Marie Dru to contribute an essay to the latest edition of the Gunn Report, the only independent report on creativity for the advertising world. Enjoy Jean-Marie Dru’s thoughts on mad-blog.com:

The economic crisis on the one hand, the digital revolution on the other…

Our profession has never been so shaken. These two circumstances create multiple effects. And we are all wondering what tomorrow will look like.

Concerning digital, communications groups are developing varied, often opposing strategies. Some, through a series of acquisitions, attempt to create a technological barrier between them and their competitors. Others, like our Agency, are putting digital at the very center of their conventional activities. Neither strategy is, by definition, the winner. There are different ways to succeed. What makes a strategy effective is the quality of its implementation, and the commitment to it.

To ensure that everything starts with digital, the 180 agency in Amsterdam totally reinvented itself. The result of their actions was even more radical than they had imagined, and the price they paid was heavy, with no fewer than 55 out of their total 120 staff changing. This is a dramatic illustration of the size of the task. The path ahead is narrow, and it is difficult.

Too often, we are more comfortable talking about digital ideas than making the inherent changes that are necessary to provoke the right solutions in the digital world. As Colleen DeCourcy, our Chief Digital Officer, said to me recently: “Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.”

In an industry faced with such challenges, the relevance of award shows, and even The Gunn Report itself, comes under scrutiny. It is a recurring subject. I remember back in the ‘70s, industry colleagues who announced the imminent demise of the Cannes Festival. We know what it has since become. Its turnover increased tenfold, because today more than ever, the celebration of creativity is essential despite of the difficult environment in which we are operating, or rather, because of it. And it’s why, although they avoided awards shows for over 50 years, the world’s leading advertisers now participate actively in them, and celebrate when their own campaigns are recognized.

In a speech I gave in Cannes last year, I underlined that “Big can be beautiful too.” In 2007, both Procter & Gamble and Unilever were awarded a Grand Prix at this festival. Today, a lot of great work comes from large companies. They have internalized the fact that audiences are not captive anymore. If you don’t entertain and engage people, they will simply ignore you. “Safe advertising“ is becoming invisible. At last.

There’s no getting away from that fact that, today, creativity is no longer optional. It is vital to every product category and to every communications discipline.

In fact, there are two factors that are contributing to put creativity in the center. On the one hand, the imminent demise of repetitive advertising, and on the other, the understanding that each and every touchpoint between a brand and its audiences must be creative.

Advertising is part of how brands behave, but brands are judged on everything they do, not just how they appear in advertising.

We need to embrace all the ways to tell a brand’s story: its packaging, its retail presence, the content of its website, its PR programs, the products themselves. And to ensure that everything is creative. This is why, even when an agency is not directly in charge of one of these elements, it must nevertheless feel a sense of responsibility. There can be no room for compromise or mediocrity if you have the ambition to be a brand leader. Advertising agencies will rediscover their original reason for being; they will again become true generalists.

But contrary to the past, they will only achieve this if they learn how to change rhythm. The problem is no longer just to ensure the coherence between the different elements of a brand’s communication, which some continue to refer to as 360°. But rather, to feed a constant conversation with our audiences, 365 days a year. From 360 to 365…it is the very rhythm of communications that digital has shaken up. Agencies need to move from a quarterly to a daily cadence.

We have to organize ourselves to deliver constant communications. A fleet of small initiatives coming together to create an ongoing communication program, generating more frequent conversation points. We need to own these conversations, not just the creative work.

Read more…

Acclaimed filmmaker Spike Jonze premieres his latest work – I’m Here, a 30-minute short film – at the Sundance Film Festival this month as part of the first-ever Opening Night’s Shorts Program at the festival. The film is a collaboration with ABSOLUT VODKA, and the partnership acknowledges the brand’s position as a pioneering and culture-shaping brand. ABSOLUT has always stood out in the marketplace as a groundbreaking company that has been supporting artists for decades. Previous collaborations include those with Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Helmut Newton. I’m Here honors the brand’s history while embarking on a new and innovative alliance with one of today’s most original filmmakers. The film came about when TBWA\Chiat\Day New York and ABSOLUT reached out to Jonze to make a film, and gave him creative control to create the film he wanted.

Read more about this groundbreaking project from TBWA’s New York office, and see the :60 trailer after the jump. Read more…